This has come up a few times in the various abortion discussions...and is something I'm curious to explore a bit more.
Here is an article about down syndrome persons who are concerned about their place in society due to genetic testing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09down.html
Other disorders being brought to light are Huntington's, Tay Sachs, and other similar chromosomal disorders.
What are thoughts on abortion in these instances and the moral implications of prenatal screening? For those of you who are pro-life, would you get a pre-natal screening even if you know you wouldn't abort? If so, why?
Depends if it is a physical or a mental disability, and to what extent. For server mental defects, there can be a debate if the child even reaches a state of living (such as when the brain is not found (granted that is also physical, but it is a physical which affects the mind, thus mental)). But, in most other cases where you can not say that they never achieve sentience, you are making a statement as what one is allowed to remove a child about. This alone means nothing without the when as well. If you keep limiting everything to before sentience, then you have also limited when the abortion can be chosen, but when you up it to partial birth, things get messier again.
So in fact, there are two different scales on to how to rate abortions. They WHY scale, and the WHEN scale. This becomes three dimensions if you consider mental and physical disabilities different.
Most debate has been on a when scale. As of right now, my entire feelings are on the WHEN scale except in cases of definite non-viability (mental or physical), and it goes as follows. When the fetus is viable (even with some medical help, the exacts of which I have yet to well define) outside the womb, and removal of the fetus intact is comparably or less invasive than an abortion, the abortion should not happen. In the case of the fetus being non-viable, the abortion is allowed.
This stems from the fact that a woman does not have a right to choose what happens to the fetus. BUT, she does have a right to remove the fetus from her body if she so desires. Yet, in the same way I cannot kill someone to force them to let go of my arm except in the most extreme circumstances, the woman is not allowed to kill in all circumstances. The invasiveness of the procedure and ability to survive outside of the womb are what determines when. This line is not clear, I admit, but such things as partial birth abortions are clearly wrong (even if the child is not viable, if you waited that long, it is actually more invasive to perform the abortion than to finish the birth and then allow the child's bodily functions to shut down, medication administered based on why the child is not-viable (no brain, no need of medicine)), while other such things as a pill which one can take in the first 2 weeks is clearly allowed (the body flushing out is far less invasive of attempting to remove a possibly fertilized egg, which has no chance for survival given current medical technology).
This standard allows a woman to already abort for what ever reason, as long as it is before the limit. Personally, I think it works better defined on the WHEN scales and not the WHY scales.
